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Lilly Graduate Fellows - Fourth Cohort

Alison Tyner Davis received her B.A. in 2006 from Wittenberg University and M.Div. in 2011 from The University of Chicago Divinity School. In the autumn of 2011, Davis will begin a doctoral program in Religion and Literature at the University of Chicago Divinity School with particular attention to the tragic motifs and theological import of the American and Czech novel.

Rachel M. Roberts received her B.A. from Dordt College in 2009 and her M.A. from Creighton University in 2011. She will be pursuing a Ph.D. in English literature at Baylor University. She has explored diverse topics such as music in Shakespeare and the letters of Henry James, but she plans to focus on early modern British literature, combining an interest in some of the great names (Shakespeare, Donne, Herbert) with the exploration of lesser-known authors such as Jane Barker and Elizabeth Cary.

Kristen Drahos received a Bachelor of Philosophy and Theology in 2009 and a Master of Theological Studies in 2011 from the University of Notre Dame. She will remain there to study Systematic Theology for her Ph.D. She is interested in the combination of philosophical and theological thinking, particularly with respect to nineteenth and twentieth century continental influences on the Christian narrative and doctrinal expression.

Kayla Durcholz received her B.A. in Classics from the University of Notre Dame in 2011. This fall she will be entering the MA/PhD program in Classics at the University of Southern California, with an emphasis on Latin language and literature. Her interests include paleography, epigraphy, archaeology, and even Medieval Studies, all in an interdisciplinary approach to understanding ancient authorship and audience and their influence on culture throughout the ages.

Maureen Fitzsimmons earned a Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature in 2009, and a Master’s Degree in Rhetoric and Composition in 2011, from Loyola Marymount University. She will continue her studies in Rhetoric and Composition at the University of California, Irvine, while working towards her PhD. The focus of Maureen’s research is the pedagogical methods employed by members of the Society of Jesus (who are also known as Jesuits) and the provenance of those methods.

PhilipForness graduated from Valparaiso University in 2007 with a B.A. in Classics and Theology. He is pursuing a Ph.D. in the History of Christianity from Princeton Theological Seminary, where he earned his M.Div. in 2011. Philip’s research focuses on theological debates and their consequences during divisive periods in the first seven centuries of the church. His dissertation considers the role that homilies played in forming communities around Christological commitments. In addition to serving as a teaching assistant for Master’s level courses, he is the program coordinator and teaching fellow for a year-long certificate program in theology and ministry through the Department of Continuing Education at Princeton Theological Seminary.

Justin Heinzekehr received his Bachelor’s Degree in 2006 from Goshen College and his Master’s Degree in Theology and Ethics from Claremont School of Theology in 2011. Justin is a PhD candidate in Religion at Claremont School of Theology. His dissertation explores the relationship between process theology and Anabaptist thought, specifically a potential reconciliation between postmodern philosophy and metaphysics and the distinctive ecclesiology, ethics, and theology of modern Anabaptism.

Christopher Holmes received his Bachelor’s Degree in 2006 from Whitworth University and his Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary in 2011. He is a PhD candidate in New Testament at Emory University. Informed by the larger religious and cultural world out of which early Christianity emerged, Chris approaches the study and interpretation of the New Testament with attention to the literary and theological particularities of the New Testament compositions and their use in contemporary faith communities. His dissertation explores the function and effect of Hebrews 12:18–29 in its literary context. Using the first-centuryliterary treatise, De Sublimitate as a framework for analyzing this passage, his dissertation highlights the stylistic features of these verses and their effect on the audience.

Robert Kubala received his BA in Philosophy from Boston College in 2009. As a Marshall Scholar, he earned his MLitt from the St. Andrews and Stirling Graduate Programme in Philosophy and his MPhil in History and Philosophy of Science from Cambridge University. Now in his fourth year at Columbia University, he pursues research in value theory and philosophy of mind. He is the Book Review Editor for the American Society for Aesthetics Graduate E-Journal (ASAGE), and with Columbia’s Philosophy Outreach he co-teaches a philosophy workshop to court-involved young adults in Harlem.

Matthew Mohorovich received his Bachelor's Degree in 2008 from The College of the Holy Cross, and his Master’s Degree in 2011 from the New School of Social Research. In the fall he will continue his studies at Boston College, pursuing a Ph.D. in philosophy. With an interest in political philosophy and political thought, his current research is on the problem of solipsism as laid out in the history of German Idealism (Fichte, Schelling), and how that problem is pivotal to the contemporary philosophical discussion concerning “Violence” and “Non-violence” as well as to contemporary issues in environmental ethics.

Emma Slager graduated from Calvin College with a Bachelor’s Degree in Geography and History in 2011 and received her Master’s Degree from the University of Oregon in 2013. She will be studying Geography at the University of Washington. Her research is at the intersection of urban geography and technology studies, focusing particularly on how communication infrastructure and civic data practices are related to urban governance.

Adam Urrutia graduated from Baylor University in 2008, with a B.A. in Religion and Philosophy. He then completed a Master of Divinity at Duke Divinity School. In the fall of 2011, Adam began study toward a Ph. D. in Systematic Theology at the Catholic University of America, where he is learning to teach theology and pursues his interests in providence; the mystery of predestination and God's universal salvific will; scholastic and neo-scholastic theology; John Henry Newman; Matthias Joseph Scheeben; the magisterium of the Catholic Church; faith and reason; and the mission of the theologian--and the nature and purpose of the study of theology--within university and local parish settings.

Kyle Sebastian Vitalegraduated from Houghton College in 2009 with a degree in English. He then earned his Masters in Early Modern English Literature at the University of Delaware in 2011, and is currently a doctoral candidate there. His dissertation considers how English readers treated secular books as sacred objects, often experiencing the sacred in everyday acts of reading. He hopes to illuminate the function of the sacred in a history of books usually told in secular-social terms. Kyle currently resides in Washington, D.C.

Heather M. Wallace received her Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy and English from Whitworth University in 2011. She is pursuing her Ph.D. in philosophy at Duke University. Heather is investigating how different fields of knowledge, from neuroscience to literature, contribute to our theories about persons. She is especially interested in the ordinary cases where first personal, second personal and third personal knowledge of a person conflict. This work combines her interests in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and ethics.

Ryan Weberling received his B.A. in English and Philosophy from Calvin College in 2009 and his M.A. in English and American Literature from Boston University in 2012. He studies 19th- and 20th-century literature in English, with particular attention to modernist British fiction. Drawing on his own formative experiences working in education and youth empowerment, his research focuses on how prose narrative and other cultural forms (letter writing, life writing, hip hop) represent the failure of identity formation in the midst of larger social contexts, including cities, families, social networks, and processes of globalization.

Tedd Wimperis received his B.A. in Classics in 2011 from Boston College and his M.A. in Latin Literature in 2013 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he is currently pursuing a Ph.D. His research interests include the social and cultural dynamics of narrative poetry, ancient conceptions of literary genre, and the interplay between history and myth in representations of political power. While his main area is the Greek and Latin poetry of Antiquity, he also studies the reception of the Classics in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

Mentors, Fourth Cohort of Lilly Graduate Fellows

Caroline Simon is Provost, Executive Vice President and Professor of Philosophy at Whitworth University in Spokane, WA. She specializes in ethics, with an emphasis on the use of literature in moral reflection. She is the author of Bring Sex into Focus and The Disciplined Heart: Love, Destiny and Imagination and has published many articles on moral knowledge, virtue ethics, friendship and sexuality. She also writes on Christian Higher Education and authored, with historian James C. Kennedy, Can Hope Endure? A Historical Case Study in Christian Higher Education, and was lead author of Mentoring for Mission: Nurturing New Faculty at Church Related Colleges. She has served on the National Board of the Lilly Fellows Program.

Thomas S. Hibbs is the Distinguished Professor of Ethics & Culture and Dean of the Honors College at Baylor University. As Dean, he directs various interdisciplinary programs, including the Honors Program, a Great Texts major, and the Baylor Interdisciplinary Core. Hibbs teaches graduate courses in the philosophy department at Baylor. Before coming to Baylor, he was chair of the philosophy department at Boston College. At BC, he also served on the Steering Committee for BC's Initiative for the Future of the Church and on the Sub-Committee on Catholic Sexual Teaching. At Baylor, he has been involved in ecumenical discussions of the work of John Courtney Murray and John Paul II. Hibbs has written on Aquinas, including Dialectic and Narrative in Aquinas: An Interpretation of the Summa Contra Gentiles, and a book on popular culture entitled Shows About Nothing.